Summary: Competencies represent a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes, and the ability to use them in work or study situations, as well as in professional and personal development. Competencies play an important role in the process of higher education and preparing students for the labor market. The purpose of the paper is to examine the level of self-assessment of students' competencies and to analyze the impact of higher education study programs on the development and improvement of their competencies in the context of the demands of the modern labor market. An empirical research was conducted using a questionnaire method on a sample of 250 students from different higher education institutions in the Republic of Croatia. The research aims to determine how students assess their own competencies, examine their attitudes towards the contribution of study programs to the development of competencies, and analyze whether there are statistically significant differences in students' attitudes with regard to their study status, employment status and level of study, which constitutes the research goal. In the statistical data processing, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test were used with a level of statistical significance α = 0.05. The results of the research show that students assess their competencies predominantly positively. Most respondents believe that the study program contributed to the acquisition and improvement of their competencies. The obtained results confirm the importance of higher education in the development of students' competencies and point to the need for continuous adaptation of study programs to labor market demands and modern educational needs.